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Often, I write of this depth in contrast to surface. So much in Western culture is about appearance and performance, not depth. A Quaker, Richard Foster, in his Celebration of Discipline: "The desperate need today is not for a greater number of intelligent people, or gifted people, but for deep people." Without prayer, there is only surface, while prayer creates deep people that can communicate through their presence the depth which is our natural habitat. And to grow depth to depth takes an expenditure of our time. Unless we prioritize living otherwise, we will be seduced by and immunized to depth by the shallowness around us. This shallowness is not wrong, not evil, but is shallow—shallow sells, depth does not sell.
Yet, in speaking of time and spiritual evolution, we do not mean evolving into time. Matter moves in time; spirit moves timelessly. We, however, cannot grow into eternity without acting in time to grow into eternity.
To be overly time-conscious, with the accompanying space-conscious, is linked with the body-mind. Still, time and space are that within which we live and act to emerge into the depths. The less-time-conscious is the journey from the surface to the depths.
Hence, the Christian Scripture has, in Ephesians 6.18: "always praying in the Spirit." The Greek would have rendered the Hebrew ruach, which reads equally "spirit," rather than as translators have rendered it of the Holy Spirit of the Christian Trinity. We can read it as both "spirit" and "Spirit." Still, in the depths, spirit is simply spirit, not of the human convention of capitalizing depth, a convention that can reflect the mind dividing wholeness into parts.
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When teaching meditation in past years, I faced the challenge of time. I knew the society did not encourage persons to take time for prayer, did not see prayer as a useful use of time and, so, set the context for persons to use a lack of time as an excuse not to be faithful to their meditation. I would strongly affirm to the classes that lack of time is not a reason not to engage daily time in silence. Time for or not to follow our spiritual path is not about time but priority: "Do I value this enough to accept I do have time for it?" And, "Do I want to live on the surfaces or from the depths?"
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In a class for beginners in prayer and meditation, one attendee said, "We're not like you. Some of us have families and fulltime jobs, so it's not so easy to find time to do the things you teach." The Sage said, "I'll tell you a story of a gathering of animals."
"Once," he said, "the animals met together and complained about humans always taking things from them. Said the cow, "They take my milk." The hen spoke, "They take my eggs." The hog added, "They take my flesh ." The whale said, "They hunt me for oil." The snail remarked, "I have something they would like to take from me if they could. They want this more than anything else." The other animals wondered at what this could be. The cow broke the silence, "What is that?" The snail said, "I have time."
"See," said the attendee, "we don't have the time you act like we do." Said the Sage, "See, you have the time you act like you don't have."
Another said, "Well, I don't know how I'll find the time." The Sage replied, "You'll never find the time. Time is, you'll never find it. The question is, 'What are you going to do with the time you can't find?'"
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